THE BREATH OF LIFE 



choice or will that the cells developed a nervous sys- 

 tem in the animal and not in the vegetable. Man 

 came because a few cells in some early form of life 

 acquired a slightly greater tendency to react to an 

 external stimulus. In this way they were brought 

 into closer touch with the outer world and thereby 

 gained the lead of their duller neighbor cells, and 

 became the real rulers of the body, and developed 

 the mind. 



It is bewildering to be told by so competent a 

 person as Professor Schiifer that at bottom there 

 is no fundamental difference between the living and 

 non-living. We need not urge the existence of a pe- 

 culiar vital force, as distinct from all other forces, 

 but all distinctions between things are useless if we 

 cannot say that a new behavior is set up in matter 

 which we describe by the word "vital," and that a 

 new principle is operative in organized matter which 

 we must call "intelligence." Of course all move- 

 ments and processes of living beings are in conform- 

 ity with the general laws of matter, but does such a 

 statement necessarily rule out all idea of the opera- 

 tion of an organizing and directing principle that is 

 not operative in the world of inanimate things? 



In Schafer's philosophy evolution is purely a me- 

 chanical process — there is no inborn tendency, no 

 inherent push, no organizing effort, but all results 

 from the blind groping and chance jostling of the 

 inorganic elements; from the molecules of undiffer- 



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